Thomas will not be home for Thanksgiving. I am trying not to dwell on it too much, because it hurts. And we have too much to be so thankful for anyway to sit and dwell on a bit of unhappiness. Things could be much different for the worse.

update21PinI drove to the hospital Monday night prepared again just in case we got to room in. In fact, the doctor had told us that if things went well and there were no bad episodes, we would do that. Except we didn’t.

Thomas had only had a couple of quick heart rate drops since Saturday. HR down to about 80, quick recovery on his own. BUT with the monitor in its new “more info” configuration, the doc could go back to an episode and look at all the stats at the time it happened. For 10 seconds before his HR dropped, T stopped breathing. While that is not “official apnea” (20 seconds makes the alarm go off) it still is enough to make the doc think that this is apnea of prematurity and T is outgrowing it, but not quite there yet. With this new info the doc is not so quick to write off the episode from Saturday as “something else” like he was before, now he is considering it a “bad apnea episode” in light of the new evidence. He apologized for giving me false hope and then gave me a couple of options:

  1. Wait a couple of days, room in, and then go home with a monitor.
  2. Restart the count from the episode on Saturday and if all continues to go well, room in this Saturday night and go home without a monitor. If there is another episode before Saturday, then discuss going home with the monitor on Saturday.

Our NICU usually does not send babies home with a monitor for apnea of prematurity before 41 weeks. They prefer that they stay there and grow out of it. They are willing to discuss it with us before then because of our distance from the hospital and the strain this is putting on our family. We are all hoping he just outgrows it before Saturday and doesn’t need the monitor.
So, I chose option two. I could tell that is what the doc really wanted.

At any rate, option one would have put us rooming in tonight and up there all day tomorrow waiting to be released instead of celebrating Thanksgiving with the big kids. Then when I got home late Monday night, Matt told me John was running a slight fever – he has been so sick ever since. All the more reason for T to stay put. And, I would really love for him to come home helathy and the docs be confident that the monitor is not needed (though I will deal with the monitor if I have to).

Trending
What is a morning basket?

It is hard to be a mom and make tough decisions even when it breaks your heart. But what is one Thanksgiving in exchange for a healthy baby? Thanksgiving is for me, not him – he has no idea the day is any different from any other.  So I spent a good part of yesterday with him and said goodbye until Friday. Then I came home to spend the day with my other sick baby today and teach my kids how to give thanks always tomorrow.

Latest posts by Pam (see all)

PinterestSMS